Bugs-

I do not speak from great experience since I am training for my first Half Iron but I bought 2 cheap books off of Amazon and am pleased with them both for seperate reasons. My main plaining book is Triathlete Magazines Essential Week by Week training guide. I really liked it. It has plans for sprint, olympic, half and full all in one book which is nice and each type of race has 10 different levels so you can choose the easiest plan "1" or the hardest and most tim econsuming "10" it gives you some info about each plan and how much time a wek it will take up so you can choose the best one for you. Then it gives you a day by day plan with good info on each workout. I really liked it. There is some page flipping involved so I just flipped all my pages the first few weeks and transfered everything to my laptop so know it is all just spelled out eracah day all ready to go.

What the above book lacks a bit is real info about what your body is doing to itself has you train or the mental side of training or any extr astuff, it is just a plan and nothing more. So my second book covers the rest.

 The Triathlete's Training Bible, also from Amazon is not heavy on plans at all and really is planless more then anything. But it covers in depth EVERYTHING else about triathalons. Maybe to in depth even. If you are training for your first sprint and don't want super detail on it then maybe the Bible is not needed but if you want a better understanding of the training for a longer race then the bible is a nice book. I think total for both was in the twenties. Hope this helps/  

I'm a big fan of Gale Bernhardt's Training Plans for Multisport Athletes.  She has both intermediate and advanced level plans for pretty much every common distance.  She was a US olympic team coach, so she knows her stuff.  

I used a plan out of an old HerSports magazine for my last race and it really was too aggressive with too much speed workouts and almost no taper.  I was not at all fresh on race day and my times show it.  Now my relatively easy bike rides of 2x the distance are faster than my bike leg was. My 2nd run leg was actually worse, this year.

Let Google be your friend........free sprint triathlon training plan <ENTER>

 Lots of free ones but they just have times, not additional instructions on recovery or specific workouts.

re: TRI plans

 

 

I think I see part of your problem: Did you notice that everyone else was swimming during your first leg where you were slogging along trying to jog underwater behind them?

 

 

j/k

Goofball! I wish every tri gave the option of doing the first leg as a run...so many tris could attract more paying participants if they offered a du option.

I think you're right -- except, a lot of them fill up already, so maybe they don't need more participants.

All the ones around here are small...I don't know if they have caps, but I can't imagine their caps are <200 participants.